22 Months Old

Ethan and I have been having a great time lately with our little guy.  It is hard to believe he is already 22 months old!  His personality seems to come out more each day, and it is fun discovering this little person that God gave us.  Sometimes it still seems to amaze me that this baby of ours really is his own person. :)  Here are a few fun things that we have discovered about our sweet little man:

Eli loves all things sports, as I think has been well documented, but still needs to go to the top of the list. :) 

• He is majorly into golf and likes to play with his indoor and outdoor golf clubs.  Ethan has taught him how to swing with two hands and he does pretty well hitting the ball. 
• He also loves basketball (and can now differentiate in his words between basketball, football, soccer ball, all of which were called "ottball" at one point.)  The people across the back alley from us have a basketball goal in their driveway, much to Elijah's delight.  We frequently go over to Blake and Katy's to shoot baskets during the day.  Even though he can throw the ball just a little higher than his head, he loves to shoot it nonetheless.  He also likes to play basketball at the park.  Sometimes I feel a bit like a crazy mom, because while all the other kids are running around playing on the slides and swinging, my kid is playing golf and basketball (both of which we bring with us in the stroller).  I want to say to the other moms, "look people, I am not making him do this, he wants to play sports, really!"

If anything comes close to rivaling Eli's love for sports, it is his love for "the wheels on the bus." 

• This kid is seriously into the wheels on the bus!  We could run in circles and sing this, and only this, all day long.  If I try to sing another song, I usually get a strong "no!" and then a plea for more wheels on the bus.  Crazy kiddo!

Elijah likes guitars.

• Ethan has a guitar in a stand in the guest room.  It hadn't gotten a lot of attention until recently.  We went to a friends house and they had a little toy guitar.  Elijah latched onto it and played with it the whole time we were there.  After that, he was obsessed with Daddy's guitar.  I made him a little guitar out of cardboard, an old snack box, and rubber bands one day.  This was a huge hit for the day, but apparently not very durable because it was caving in from the tension of the rubber bands by the next day.  The next day I made him another guitar, this time out of plastic and sturdier materials (an old mouthwash bottle, a paintstick, and duct tape to make it shiny and silver).  While this was pretty fun, he is going to be SO excited to know that my parents got him his very own little toy guitar and it will get here in just a few days!    

Eli is a smart boy!

• Clearly I know that I am biased, but I am continually impressed by the way that Eli is learning and growing.  Today he counted all the way to 10 on his own!  We had done this with him before with him repeating after us, but today he did it all by himself. 
• Eli continues to learn and recognize letters.  We got some little animal crackers from the store that are shaped like letters and numbers.  He recognizes, and then eats, a lot of them. :) 
• He can spell his first word...TEXAS!  As you saw in the previous video, he has a Texas Rangers pillow in his bed.  Now he can not only look at it or a Texas shirt and point out all of the letters, but you can just ask him how to spell Texas without looking at anything and he will do it.  Or sometimes he just starts spelling it and then I ask him what that spells and he says "Texas" with gusto.  Whoever thought his first word to spell would be Texas...once again that just confirms that he is being raised to be a sports nut. :)        
• Elijah is definitely in the parrot stage and repeats everything you say!  It is amusing.  The other day he tasted something and I said, "good, huh?"  Then he looked back to me and said, "good huh?"  I laughed and of course he continued to repeat it. :)  Maybe I should work on being a little more refined in my speech.

Finally, Elijah loves to laugh and to make us laugh.

• Like most kids probably are at his age, Eli loves to be tickled, to laugh, to play.  I don't think that I could ever get enough of that squealing little kid laughter...you just can't hear it without it making you smile and cheering you up!
• Eli is starting to notice if he does something that makes you laugh and he will keep doing it over and over.  We seem to have a little comedian on our hands. :)

One sweet picture of Eli and Garfield at the front of Toys R Us.  I can hardly get him to go in the store because he loves to sit and drive the green car with the orange cat. :)